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June 12, 2005
SCSI Cards...
I have had a lovely time today - the middle of a long weekend and I had to work. Got a call about 9:30 AM and then worked continuously on the problem from 10:30 to 7:30 PM. An ultra-scsi card, cable and tape drive that were tested on Friday refused to work on a client site.
In this case, the card is a Qlogic dual-Ultra LVD/SE card which has custom drivers (SUNQqus*). The tape drive is an IBM Ultrium 2 which also has special drivers. So the problem could be any of the:
- scsi card (LVD)
- scsi driver (Qlogic)
- scsi cable (Sun)
- ultrium tape drive (LVD)
- ibm tape driver (IBM)
The customer outage window ended with no resolution from the poor bloke on-site, even with me logged in from home. So we both headed into the office (around a Swans home-game crowd) and built another server to test all the parts we were able to remove (everything except the card). We tried an standard SE card (no problem), then an Ultra-Wide SE card (no problem), then another LVD/SE card (same card and revision as the one used in the morning). No problem. We tried all different combinations - no problem. So what next? Maybe the problem was a qlogic problem - given that the customer server also had a qlogic fibre card... Anyway, we headed back on-site with the LVD/SE card and also the UW-SE (just in case).
Part way there we were told the outage window had been delayed by 45 minutes - just enough time to park between Krispy Kreme and Starbucks :-)
Brought the server down, popped the existing card, plugged in the replacement, booted up and everything just worked. The only change was from one card to the other - both cards are the same part number, same revision, same firmware. Both cards worked in a test environment but only one works at the customer site.
Oh well, the customer is happy - but two engineers (one of them was me) have spent the whole day fooling around with SCSI cards...
Maybe I can organise some TIL (time in lieu) with the boss...
Posted by Ozguru at June 12, 2005 09:00 PM
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Comments
Posted by: Pixy Misa at June 12, 2005 10:49 PM
